Our team is meeting and pitching to a lot of new accounts these days. Oh, by the way, if you are looking for help with your marketing and social media and would like to partner with a terrific company that has unlimited creative ideas, tons of experience, and is easy and fun to work with, I have included our contact info at the bottom for your convenience. Now back to my story.

In doing the research for client proposals I’ve visited dozens of Facebook pages and one thing jumped out immediately: too many companies use Facebook purely as a showcase for their work. Photo after photo, before and afters, or just before and afters and most of the time never labeled. Ad nauseam, ad infinitum. There is virtually no engagement with fans, and nothing at all to break up the picture albums.

Hello? What part of SOCIAL media do you folks not understand?!

Imagine engaging in this type of behavior offline. You go to a party armed with 20 lbs of albums full of your children’s pictures. Upon meeting someone for the first time you spend the next half hour regaling that person with the wonderfulness of your kids.

“This is little Johnny winning the baseball trophy last year. And here is Suzie accepting the high point award for her age group at the swim club. Oh, and this is Suzie’s prom dress, which of course she made herself. Isn’t she beautiful? Did I mention that Johnny won the Geography Bee last year?”

Would you be surprised if your new acquaintance wandered off rather rapidly towards the guacamole dip? How insulted would you be to learn that taco chips are preferred to your ongoing, mind-numbing narrative? Is this how people behave at parties? They’d better not. The same is true for Facebook.

Facebook is not your portfolio. Facebook is where your content goes to make friends.

If you treat Facebook as a gallery for your work you are not only missing the point but you are also missing many opportunities.

Put a human face on your company.

Does the company owner or an employee coach a local kids’ team? Put up a picture. How about featuring an Employee of the Month, and describe how great that person is and why. Do you attend local events? Share the experience. Potential customers don’t only want to know that you do good work and are reputable; they also want to be able to relate to the people doing the work at their home.

Find out more about your customers.

Learn about their preferences by asking questions that are not open-ended. For example, rather than ask, “What kind of counter top do you like?” Say, “If you were to renovate your kitchen in the next few months would you get a) granite b) marble or c) butcher block countertops?” Or “Which pavers do you think looks best? a) slate b) brick c) concrete d) stone?” You will get much more engagement if you suggest the answers instead of forcing people to think.

Provide useful information.
Your audience craves the kind of information that you probably take for granted. New product releases or better ways maintaining their home are appealing to most people. Remember, you want to be viewed as the authority in your industry, and the more you appear to be up on current trends the better you will be positioned as such.

Use Facebook as a gateway to your website.
That’s where you really want people to go, right? Your website should be the place where potential customers can find out everything about you, what services you offer, the company ownership and history, and all contact information. Here is where your want your portfolio to be, either as a separate page/tab or optimally as part of a blog page. There are search engine benefits to updating your website often, too. So every time it makes sense to do it, add a link to your website in your Facebook posts.

Have fun!
Pictures of cute kittens and puppies and funny memes are kind of silly for a business to use, right? WRONG. These are the types of Facebook posts that get shared and have the greatest potential to go viral. If you want a great and inexpensive way to spread the word about your business consider be funny, whimsical or cute occasionally.

If these Facebook suggestions seem like too much work we can help. As promised, here is our contact information: Content + Creativity – www.contentandcreativity.com, 610-937-5187, info@contentandcreativity.com